Book 34 for 2026: “Forgotten”, Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson

August 23, 2026 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

The subtitle is “Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials”. Published in 2025, the book follows the authors’ travels from their home in Ramallah in the West Bank in search of ancient buildings, churches, grave memorials, etc. For those who find it difficult to picture the location of Israel, Gaza, West Bank, etc. there is a detailed map at the beginning of the book.

The memorials they find vary from that for three Egyptian soldiers who died in the 1967 war to buried famous poets. They discover the remains of the wall that surrounded the great Bronze Age city of Tell Balata and a sophisticated water system from a Bronze and Iron Age city. In many cases these places are hidden among modern Israeli buildings or appear to be a bunch of rubble at first. Usually, they manage to find these places with the help of older locals.They find the tombs of saints, a Greek Orthodox monastery that had to be rebuilt, the remains of a deserted mosque destroyed by Israelis–all that is left is the minaret, the ruins of many ancient Palestinian villages that over time have been destroyed by the Israelis. In some cases ruins from the BC era have been built over with malls and parks, including one that is now under the Palestine Television Tower.

One thing they noted that has nothing to do with buildings or ruins is how the Dead Sea is becoming smaller and smaller due to excessive irrigation for crops farmed by kibbutzes. The Jordan River feeds into the Dead Sea and its level has gone down for the same reason. Drought and irrigation has increased the need for water for crops. The authors question the longterm sustainability of these irrigation methods. As I read this I thought of all the irrigation in the West of the US, the low water flow of the Colorado River, and how the Western US is facing some of the same issues.

Water, Water, Where?

April 28, 2014April 28, 2014 / Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Today, I drove about fifty miles to watch a play especially produced by my friend, King Hill, for the Gem Theatre in Claude. I almost did not go because of high winds and blowing dust. Between 8 and 10 this morning visibility was so low it was impossible to see the horizon. High wind and blowing dust warnings started yesterday. Now, as I write this, these warnings have continued for more than 24 hours. Red flag warnings flash across the TV screen. Thankfully, not quite the dust bowl extremes, not yet anyway.

Originally, a green sea of grass covered all the land where I live in the Panhandle of Texas, the Llano Estacado. Immense herds of buffalo roamed free. This prairie grass protected the land from erosion. Rivers and an occasional canyon interrupted this endless sea, including the Canadian River, Palo Duro Canyon and the network of canyons running into it. Once the Spanish brought horses, Kiowa and Comanche ruled this sea for more than a hundred years. Under a full moon, the Comanche reigned by night raids from Nebraska to Mexico.

What happened? Plows brought by people from the East dug up the grass. These people planted the crops they knew, wheat, corn. They settled in towns and homesteaded the country. They brought cattle and in some areas developed gigantic ranches. Hunters killed all the buffalo except a few the famous rancher Charlie Goodnight and his wife managed to save. Remnants of this southern herd now live at Caprock Canyons State Park near the tiny town of Quitaque, Texas. Those who farmed dry land farmed. In a normal year crops grew, the people prospered. In dry years dust blew because there was no grass to hold the dirt.

Today, giant pumps pull water from the aquifers, the Ogallala, the Santa Rosa. My well is 400 feet deep, some are nearly 900. More and more people move here from other parts of the United States. They want lawns like the ones they had where it rains forty inches a year. It does not rain much here, twenty in a good year, ten in a bad year. These aquifers lose much more water to irrigation in a year than are replenished by rain. Farmers grow corn,wheat, cotton, and milo, all irrigated. In some places where the water became to saline for crops, the pumps sit abandoned.

Today, I drove by miles and miles of dry, thirsty grass, perfect fuel for the wind driven wildfires which sometimes start this time of year. In other places irrigation pivots rained water on immense emerald fields of wheat. I could not help but wonder how much of this water evaporated in the sixty mile an hour wind. As I finish writing this with the TV on weather watching, I see Fire Weather Watch, High Wind Warning, Red Flag Warning flash across the screen. I hear the wind roar and heavy outdoor furniture slide across the patio. I’ve seen wildfires, had a half mile of cedar post fence burned down. All it takes is a tiny piece of cigarette thrown from a truck or car, a flash of dry lightning. They predict three more days of this.

I love the space, the vermillion sunsets, the intense blue of the sky. I watch my neighbors water, water, water their new houses in the country. I think about those pivots irrigating in the wind, and I wonder what will happen when all the water’s gone.